Crime Blog

Shooter says he deserves to die for killing man during attempted robbery near Sherlock’s Pub

A 19-year-old man says he deserves to die for fatally shooting another man during an attempted robbery last week in the parking lot of a northeast Dallas bar and grill.

“I feel like since I took his life, then my life should be taken, too,” Justin Gerald Jones said Thursday during a jailhouse interview with WFAA-TV. “I feel like I shouldn’t be here right now because I killed a man for no reason, so yeah, I deserve to die.”

Authorities say Jones killed 36-year-old Donald Morrow at the conclusion of an hours-long robbery spree. Jones is being held in the Dallas County jail on bail totaling more than $1 million and faces charges of aggravated robbery and capital murder.

The confessed getaway driver, Tierra Winters, is also being held on a charge of capital murder. Her bail is set at $1 million. She declined an interview request.

Margie Morrow, Donald Morrow’s mother, ascribes to the biblical view of an eye for an eye.

“I do believe there comes a time and a place when what you do, you suffer the literal consequences for it and in my heart right now, unless God changes it, that’s how I feel,” Margie Morrow said.

In the hours prior to the killing, Jones says he had popped some Xanax and smoked a PCP-laced marijuana “blunt.” He said he did not know it had been laced with PCP and said he had never previously done the hallucinogenic drug which has been associated with horrific, violent crimes.

“It kicked in and then I don’t really remember much,” Jones said. “It was like I was blacking out. It was like I was sleep walking. I’m doing it but I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He says he then ran into his friend, Zadarian Montgomery, who he says convinced him to get involved in a robbery-carjacking outside a convenience store on Sunnyvale Street on the night of Oct. 17. Authorities say Jones pointed a gun at the victim and demanded money and the man’s wallet. The pair then fled in man’s car, with Jones behind the wheel, police said.

“Me, being stupid on those drugs and not knowing what was going on, I go do it with the dude,” Jones said.

Jones says he doesn’t remember what came next. But authorities say the men split up and Jones kept the car. At some point, he met up with Winters and she drove Jones to several locations in Dallas as he robbed several people, police say.

At the end of that robbery spree, authorities say Jones approached Morrow, Donnie Bullock and Bullock’s girlfriend about 12:45 a.m. on Oct. 18 in the parking lot of Sherlock’s Baker St. Pub & Grill at Park Lane and North Central Expressway. The man pointed a gun at Bullock and demanded his wallet. Morrow tried to intervene, hitting the gunman, who fatally shot him.

Jones says he doesn’t remember anything about the encounter but he does recall someone hitting him and the sound of a gun going off.

“After the gunshot, it’s like I’m dreaming,” he said. “I don’t even remember how I got home.”

When he woke up, he says Montgomery told him that a bullet was missing from the gun and he knew then that he must have hurt someone, but he didn’t know who he had hurt or that someone had died.

“I don’t even know this man,” Jones said. “I did it and life is about choices and decisions. I made the choice to hit that blunt and I went out and did what I did and I’m sorry for that but I’m not asking them to accept my apology.”

For Donald Morrow’s grief-stricken parents, it’s a bad dream that they won’t wake up from.

“He was my son, my only son,” said his mother. “I’ll now not see him get married or have children. He’s the end of our blood line.”

“My husband and I have realized and reconciled ourselves over the past few days that we are not the same Don and Margie Morrow we were a week ago and we must live on with that change and we’re going to do our best and stand by while the justice system takes care of getting justice for our son,” she said.

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